Kraken introduces support for PayPal’s stablecoin, PYUSD
Kraken announced on Aug. 18 that it had added support for PayPal’s stablecoin, also known as PayPal USD or PYUSD.
The cryptocurrency exchange said that deposits and withdrawals of PYUSD are currently open and added that it will open trading on Aug. 21.
Kraken said that PayPal’s stablecoin will initially be available on Kraken and Kraken Pro. It noted that it will add support for PYUSD on its Kraken App and Instant Buy features after user trading produces sufficient liquidity for the asset.
Kraken’s announcement also indicates that PYUSD deposit and order sizes must be worth at least $5.00 and that orders may have up to 4 decimal points of precision. The exchange will offer U.S. dollar (USD) and euro (EUR) trading pairs. Kraken additionally instructed users to deposit PayPal’s stablecoin only on the Ethereum blockchain.
Broader adoption is on the way
PayPal unveiled its stablecoin on Aug. 7, at which time it said that PYUSD would serve as a fully-backed, dollar-pegged asset. However, apart from its own app, PayPal offered few details about the platforms on which PYUSD could be purchased.
While Kraken was one of the first crypto exchanges to incorporate PYUSD, several others have followed suit, demonstrating a wider market acceptance of the stablecoin. ByBit also announced plans to support PYUSD on Aug. 17, while Changelly announced support for PYUSD on Aug. 11. Huobi announced support for the asset on Aug. 8. The two largest crypto exchanges in operation — Binance and Coinbase — have not announced any such plans.
Hardware manufacturer Ledger also announced integration with PayPal on Aug. 16, shortly after PYUSD’s reveal. Though Ledger said this would provide access to PayPal’s four supported cryptocurrencies, it did not state that it would provide access to PYUSD.
According to on-chain data, $26.9 million worth of PYUSD has already been issued, indicating robust market activity around the new stablecoin. However, this is not reflected on major market aggregators, such as CoinMarketCap and Coingecko, which instead list PYUSD as untracked and previewed assets, respectively.
